These days, employees are more stressed than ever before. High pressure jobs, longer work days, and with the retirement age getting later and later, it’s no wonder the stress level for workers are at an all time high. To combat the emotional and mental affects of stress, employers are searching for new ways to help.

The Japanese IT company Ferray recently noticed that their employees were working themselves way too hard and suffering from excessive stress. After seeing this, company head Hidenobu Fukuda introduced a “kitty policy” allowing his employees to bring cats in to work whenever they want.

Employees absolutely love the policy, with one saying, “Cats are sleeping just beside us… It’s healing.”

Cats are the perfect animals for a work environment because, unlike other pets, they don’t require very much attention. Cats can take care of themselves and enjoy relaxing quietly, allowing the humans around them to go about their work days without distraction.

Fukuda recently took this kitty policy a step further by offering monthly bonuses to staff who rescued cats from shelters and brought them to work. Japan’s streets and shelters are hugely overpopulated by cats, so this was his way of trying to help the cat population in his nation.

Fukuda has admitted that there have been some problems with the policy, saying, “sometimes a cat will walk on a phone and cut off the call, or they shut down the computers by walking onto the off switch.” However, the positives far outweigh the negatives, so the policy is here to stay for now!